George Kaiser and philanthropy...

[TheArtist]

   I'm not a 501K, so the philanthropy of Tulsa has thus far failed to hear my idea.  The idea of mapping Greenwood prior to 1921 has many facets; but we start simple.

   after locating the 1920 census of course there's tremendous reference material and one of the most frustrating aspects in looking back at Greenwood is the dysphoria of information.

   I propose a Wiki Style digital Library of all things relevant to that one place overtime.  Place book indexing.  Cities have GIS and I suggest Greenwood should.

    I was disappointed that things did not happen in 2018 to commemorate the 1918 bird's-eye view of Tulsa.   AHHA has a fantastic print Laboratory. we should have discussed what the city fathers were trying to convey to the world in commissioning that image.  Bartlesville bird's eye view came earlier & it is not as refined... looks Ozarkie.  The 1919 bird's eye view of Atlanta is 100 this year but Atlanta doesn't have what we have. 

   During our growth the Sanborn Maps maintained a wealth of information. Atlanta only has one edition because of its early creation.

   I've located three versions of Tulsa Sanborn Maps which run from  1896 though our Magic years.  One is from the national Library of Congress and it is readily available online however it's not geographically referenced so to move from one sheet to another rather than just panning a map you have to go to a library index and search out other locations and that's just stupid.

   On the third floor of our Central Library is a big tabletop computer dedicated to maps.   In the Oklahoma room are paper copies of the Library of Congress Sanborn maps of Tulsa.  8x11... The Originals arer 54 inches by 3 foot or so.  Equally stupid.  And worst of all we had at our library a unique set worthy of study that have been buried in the city historical society's basement, accessible through payment of money ...unacceptable. 

   A third set is in the hands of University of Oklahoma.

   Each has unique information which I propose to consolidate and with Wiki effort should we build it in the cloud the crowd will come.

    Anyway, a crowd is coming soon.

Sounds like a great idea!

[patric]

Sounds like a great idea!

Are we wanting modern GPS-tagged drone shots for comparison?